Kennedy then takes a strange turn by invoking the memory of Reinhold Niebuhr who was not a Christian by any kind of New Testament measure. His faith was not in keeping with the message delivered by the apostles and so I continue to be somewhat baffled as to why his flawed paradigms and bogus 'realist' dilemmas are granted any standing.
His application of realism to the realm of Liberal Theology
meant (in practical terms) that New Testament imperatives could be discarded.
They weren't inspired (not really) and as such they were easily jettisoned.
They didn't apply to today's context. Sadly and tragically many in the
Anabaptist community listened to this wolf in sheep's clothing and turned their
back on the only part of their heritage worth saving.
Niebuhr decries apostolic teaching as 'Renaissance faith in
the goodness of man'. The truth is that a close read of Niebuhr reveals a man
severely flawed in his thinking but most importantly his connection to
Christianity is cursory at best. He's interacting with the tradition but the Scriptures
are not only a foreign text to him but a hated one. The Biblically-minded
Christian has no time for the likes of Reinhold Niebuhr (or his brother). These
men stand condemned.
As Kennedy reveals in his selected quotes, Niebuhr's response
to New Testament ethics are very simple – they don't work. And this worldly message
of what is effectively unbelief resonates with many today in the Christian
Right and the Dominionist factions who (on the basis of philosophical argument
and what is often casuistry) set aside New Testament teachings about bearing
the cross, seeking the Kingdom, power, violence, mammon, and much else.
Kennedy is astute enough to realise no Confessionally
Reformed person can embrace the likes of Reinhold Niebuhr but his realism
tickles his ears a bit and he wants to embrace it – if in modified form. For in
the end, Niebuhr gives a modern expression to the same ideological filth that
has dominated Church history since the time of Constantine, the rise of
Christendom and all the wickedness it generated under the banner of Christ.
Having gone through various permutations over the centuries and yet starting
with Constantine, the paradigm of cultural Christianity continues to use an
ever changing philosophical toolkit to dismantle New Testament teachings and
imperatives all in the name of maintaining a seemingly coherent tradition and
political standing.
Kennedy's conclusion is basically an affirmation of Christian
politics with the same caveats and warnings so many have already given. He
offers nothing and nothing has been learned. He thinks Calvin's vision of Christian
politics to be limited – would Kennedy consider Calvin's Geneva limited? What
about Knox's Scotland? Such limited visions led to a series of bloodbaths that
started the process of Christendom's collapse. Once again, nothing has been
learned – and even less by the context-less examples of Covid-19 and the
Ukraine War.
Kennedy wants to argue that we're free to act for good in the
world and that the application of this includes a Christian state. But what he
fails to understand is that when 'the gospel' is expressed by men with badges
and guns putting people into cages, executing them or bombing them – then the
gospel has been lost. This present evil age will continue in its evil. There
will be wars and rumours of war. Beasts will rise and fall, devouring each
other. Men will build Towers of Babel. Dressing the Beast up in vestments or
putting a cross atop the proud cursed tower will not make it Christian. It is
just another form of godliness denying the power thereof.
We are not entering times when 'disobedience could be more
necessary' as Kennedy absurdly posits – a case of the blind leading the blind.
The Church has sold out over and over again and especially so in the seductive,
deceptive and utterly hypocritical context of the United States and its blood-soaked
pseudo-moral narratives. We are always called to antithesis – not the sham
antithesis of Abraham Kuyper but that which the apostles spoke of, repeatedly
warning Christians to not be friends with the world, to live as pilgrims, and
to take up the cross. New Testament Christianity is always counter-cultural and
this doesn't change in a Constantinian context. In fact it just becomes more
pronounced and as history teaches, sometimes more dangerous.
Faithful Christians have long been marginalized and even
persecuted through various forms by the US government and its larger system.
This is further complicated by the fact that the official US government is
often but a facade for powerful interests standing behind it – the true
government as it were. Those familiar with my writings will remember I have
more than once spoken of this while reflecting on the Manhattan skyline and the
nature of its power – every bit as critical and essential to the US order as
that in Washington.
Faithful Christians following the New Testament have been at
odds with the American order since colonial times and certainly since the days
of its eighteenth century rebellion and independence. Faithful Christians have
been marginalized and this reality has only become more acute with the advent
of industrialisation, urbanisation, capitalism, and certainly with America's
rise to imperial status at the beginning of the twentieth century. When people
like Kennedy speak of Christian politics being a force for good or the pursuit
of justice, the only response is to laugh.
Kennedy and those like him think that losing middle class
status is persecution. These are the same people who lament the loss of
'Christian' America. Reveling in vain and empty traditions, they think they
walk free but are lost in a labyrinth of shadow, and while terms like
'Biblical' are on their lips – were they to taste its true doctrine they would
recoil in horror.
There is a final tragic note to this unfortunate article – the revelation that it was a lecture and one given in modern Hungary, the Magyar Republic currently run by the nationalist government of Viktor Orban, an authoritarian and liar who believes he can effect Christian government by the underhanded manipulation of institutions and the suppression of speech and political opponents. In that respect Orban is a true son of his nation's Calvinist heritage – or what it perhaps had always hoped to be but could never accomplish. Orban expresses in very stark terms the true guiding ethos of the larger Dominionist movement – the end justifies the means. Win at all costs and once you've won you can write the story and shape the narrative however you may wish. This has guided American Evangelical politics for the past seventy-five years and yet the successes have been few as American conservatism undermines itself at several key points. Orban's 'success' and that in a relatively short time has made him a hero and a model. For New Testament-minded Christians it is a warning.